Former Mexican minister Genaro Garcia Luna, who once initiated the so-called war on drugs in his country, was found guilty yesterday by a US court of corruption and complicity in the illegal cocaine trafficking from Mexico V USA. Now he faces a life sentence.

He is the highest-ranking former Mexican official on trial in New York, where federal justice is at war with the Central and South American drug cartels, which capitalize on the cooperation of local officials to flood the US market with drugs.

A 12-year-old jury in the Brooklyn District Court found former Secretary of Public Safety under President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) guilty on five counts, including accepting millions of dollars in bribes to protect the Sinaloa cartel and complicity in trafficking 53 tons of cocaine from Mexico to the US during the period. from 2001 to 2012. “Justice has been served,” a spokesman for the Mexican president, Jesús Ramirez, tweeted with satisfaction.

Before becoming minister, Mr. García Luna, an engineer, was a police officer and head of the intelligence agency from 2001 to 2005, which deals with the fight against corruption and organized crime.

unflappable

His wife and their two children were in the courtroom when the verdict was read to the former minister, who did not seem to be embarrassed.

After days of jury deliberations and a month-long trial, Mr. Garcia Luna, who didn’t say a word at the hearing, is now a “convicted felon,” the Brooklyn federal prosecutor’s office said.

Mr. Garcia Luna, “once head of Mexico’s law enforcement, will live out the rest of his days as a traitor to his country and dedicated law enforcement who risk their lives to take down drug cartels,” U.S. Attorney Brian Peace said in a statement. summarized in a press release issued by his office.

The former Mexican minister’s sentence, which will range from 20 years to life in prison, is expected to be announced on June 27.

From mid-January to mid-February, the prosecution called 26 witnesses to testify, including nine accused or convicted drug dealers who were extradited to the US for trial and cooperated with the judiciary to obtain lighter sentences.

The prosecution asked the jury to hear these “repentant criminals” and find Garcia Luna “guilty”: the 54-year-old man, he stressed, was a man “with two faces”, a drug trafficking minister who worked closely with Washington, on the one hand , an “accomplice in crime” of the Sinaloa cartel, on the other.

In 2019, the same court in Brooklyn sentenced former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán to life in prison. His Colombian partner Dario Antonio Usuga, or “Otoniel”, is also on trial in this New York court, as is former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Genaro Garcia Lula was arrested on December 9, 2019 in Dallas, Texas (South). Since then, he has been in custody and charged with accepting multimillion-dollar bribes to turn a blind eye to drug trafficking by the cartels.

Cesar de Castro’s lawyer, who throughout the trial spoke of a “lack of evidence,” unconvincingly promised yesterday, surrounded by supporters of his client and opponents of former President Calderon, that his client “will continue to fight (…) for the name.”

^{Sources: REUTERS, AFP, APE-MPE.}